Beautify our gaze

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We have often heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  This is usually taken to mean that the sense of beauty is utterly subjective; there is no accounting for taste because each person’s taste is different.  The statement has another, more subtle meaning: if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger.  The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything.  When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary.

John O Donohue, Beauty: Rediscovering The True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope

What is unsaid

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The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid

than that which is said in any conversation.

We know better than we do

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunday Quote: Things change

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You live,

not by securing yourself against impermanence, 

but by finding yourself as impermanence

Michael Stone, Awake in the World

Three dimensions

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Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts; most especially, the ability, despite our grief and losses, to courageously inhabit the past, the present, and the future all at once.

The wisdom that comes from maturity is recognized through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics that form human identity: what has happened, what is happening now and what is about to occur. 

Immaturity is shown by making false choices: living only in the past, or only in the present, or only in the future, or even, living only two out of the three. 

David Whyte

New month: accessing strength

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Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. …When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.

Pema Chodron

All around us

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One of the most important – and most neglected – elements in the beginning of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendor that is all around us

Thomas Merton